My Weekend In Palm Springs By Ethan V.

                                                           My Weekend In Palm Springs            7-21-20

By Ethan V.

    Over the weekend, my family and I took a trip with our friends the Vegas to a house in Palm Springs and had a lot of fun. Here is what we did over the weekend.

                                                                        Friday                                     7-17-20

    Today we starting driving to Palm Springs at 12:45 PM, and we brought our dog Noodle. Noodle gets motion sickness and throws up in the car, so we had to give him Cerenia, a drug that prevents him from throwing up in the car. But Cerenia makes him drool everywhere and it is disgusting. In fact, I brought a pillow to rest my head on, and Noodle somehow took over the pillow and drooled on it and put all his fur on it. The pillow was soaking wet from his drool!

    After 2 hours and 35 minutes, we arrived in Palm Springs at 3:10 PM. We almost immediately went into the pool. It got up to 114 degrees in Palm Springs so if you stayed outside for only a couple minutes you get baked by the sun because it was so hot.

                                                                      Saturday                                  7-18-20

    Today I woke up at 6:40 AM, which is way too early for me but at the same time this means more time in the pool so it's okay. It is so hot in Palm Springs that at 7 AM its already 80 degrees! Anyway, today we mostly stayed in the pool the entire time, and it was a very happy feeling to finally have a pool and air conditioning. Since we woke up so early, we had to be quiet until 10 AM because of the Palm Springs noise rules. The rules are that you cannot be loud before 10 AM and after 10 PM and if you are caught being loud, you will get fined 500 dollars. We did almost nothing the entire day, and for dinner we had lasagna. 

                                                                     Sunday                                     7-19-20

    Sunday was our last full day in Palm Springs, so it was sad but it was one of the best days in my opinion. We started the day by eating breakfast tacos made by my dad, and they were delicious. Then before we went into the pool I played a game of Uno with the Vega kids, Lucia and Vincent. The game took so long that we were playing the game when my mom, Izzy, Suzanne and Jorge went shopping downtown and we were still playing the same game when they got back one and a half hours later. We were in the pool until about 1 PM, and then we watched Inner Space and I didn't watch the whole movie because I was tired. Then Izzy and I went back into the pool and after that we watched Shanghai Noon which is a really good and funny movie. For dinner we had Five Guys.

                                                                    Monday                                  7-20-20

    Today was our last day, and we only had about 3 and a half hours till we had to leave. It was mostly packing our stuff, but we also got about an hour of pool time before we had to drive again. In the car I mostly slept, but Noodle was drooling again and it was very uncomfortable because Noodle drooled right under my butt so I couldn't sit regularly (thanks, Noodle).

TikTok Is Getting Banned By Ethan V.

                                                               TikTok Is Getting Banned              7-16-20

By Ethan V.

    TikTok, a VERY popular app with over 800 million users, is getting banned in multiple countries. The reason for this is that the company that makes the app, ByteDance, has been stealing its users' information. TikTok has been around since September 2016, and since then it has been downloaded over 1.5 billion times! 

    Some businesses have made their employees delete Tiktok, including Wells Fargo, Amazon and the US Military (Admiral Koko told us to delete TikTok a long time ago). India has banned the app after a violent clash with Chinese soldiers which made 20 Indian soldiers die at the Himalayan border. Because of this, the Indian Government banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok.

    The US is trying to ban TikTok because of security reasons, but President Trump personally had a bad experience with the app. On June 20th, 2020 President Trump held a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma and it was trolled by TikTok users. Users each reserved hundreds of tickets and organizers of the rally were bragging about how many tickets were reserved only to have a turnout of 6,200 people. Maybe this was bad for Trump but I thought this was pretty funny.

 

The Washington Redskins Are Changing Their Name By Ethan V.

                                     The Washington Redskins Are Changing Their Name      7-15-20

By Ethan V.

    In the wake of the death of George Floyd and other race related acts that have happened recently, the NFL team the Washington Redskins are being forced to change their team's name. The organization has gotten a lot of backlash because of the racial slur in the name Redskins, and they haven't thought about changing it until now. A lot of this has to do with their sponsor, FedEx, who said to the organization that they would stop sponsoring them if they kept the name. The team owner Dan Snyder said before that he wouldn't change the name, but when FedEx said they would stop sponsoring the team, he immediately reviewed the team's name.    

    A redskin is a racist name for a Native American and the organization has been criticized for using it as the team name. Their logo portrays a Native American chief named John "Two Guns" White Calf. White Calf was the Chief of the Pigean Blackfeet tribe in Montana. The Washington Redskins were named in 1933, and the name was meant to honor the Native Americans. 

    The organization is looking into multiple replacement names, and my personal favorite is the Washington Redtails. This name honors the Tuskegee airmen of World War 2. They were the first black airmen in the US military and they were called redtails because of the red on the nose and tails of their planes. I put a picture of what the new logo would look like below.

Some Major School Districts Are Going Online Again In The Fall By Ethan V.

                                Some Major School Districts Are Going Online Again In The Fall   7-14-20

By Ethan V.

    On July 13th, 2020 two of the largest school districts in California, San Diego Unified School District (that I'm enrolled in) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (the second largest district in the nation), announced that the return to school in the Fall will be online. This is very sad for me personally because I am starting at a new school (Roosevelt Middle School) and I am tired of only getting to see my teachers and classmates only on Zoom.

    The Coronavirus is not showing signs of letting up any time soon and because of the safety of their students, teachers and students' families some school districts have to take a look at starting the new school year online. Major school districts in San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York City, Nashville, Detroit and Dallas all decided to start the new school year online. 

    The San Diego Unified school district was working on different ideas of how the schools could reopen and they sent a survey to all of the parents.  The options were 1) to be on campus full time, 2) to learn from home full time (if you or your family members are higher risk to the virus), or 3) a hybrid of the other two options. My parents voted for option 1 for Izzy and me. But the survey doesn't really matter anymore because they announced we will all be doing option 2 in the Fall.

A Little Bit About Fortune Cookies By Ethan V.

                                                      A Little Bit About Fortune Cookies            7-13-20

By Ethan V

    I really love fortune cookies. A couple of days ago, my mom and I went to Mitsuwa and I saw a box of fortune cookies. Well, I bought those fortune cookies and I do not regret it. Fortune cookies were first created in 1918 at a Bay Area Bakery named Benkyodo by David Jung, a Chinese immigrant. Even though they were created by a Chinese immigrant, fortune cookies are not popular in China and are mostly popular in Western countries and especially Chinese restaurants in the US. 

    Before the fortune cookies that we know and love were invented, the Japanese had a very similar type of cookie called tsujiura. Tsujiura are larger, darker and have different ingredients in them, but they also have a fortune inside like fortune cookies do.

    Over 4 billion fortune cookies are made each year, and over 4.5 million are made each day! The biggest producer of the cookies is Wonton Food Inc., which is based is Brooklyn, NY. What I really like about fortune cookies is that you always get a good tasting crunchy cookie along with a surprise message that could be good or bad. It's like a two for one meal deal! 

What's going on with the 2020 Olympics? By Ethan V.

                                         What's going on with the 2020 Olympics?  7-11-20

By Ethan V.

    

    The 2020 Summer Olympics were scheduled to start July 29th, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic they were postponed until July 23rd, 2021. This could be very bad or potentially very good for the 11,091 athletes competing in the Olympics. Many of these athletes have been training for 4 years for this opportunity and COVID-19 is messing up their whole training plan. On the other hand, some athletes might have had an injury or not have been ready for the start date of July 2020, but they could be ready for July 2021. With one more year to train for the Olympics, some athletes can get better at their sports/events or also get injured while training.

    

    The delay is very sad news for me because the Olympics are always something to look forward to and it's the Summer Olympics which in my opinion have the best sports. My favorite sports in the Summer Olympics are basketball and swimming (not synchronized swimming). I also like to watch track and field to see how fast some people can run and occasionally some javelin and pole vaulting.

    For the 2020 Summer Olympics, the Olympic committee have added 5 new sports to the games. The new sports are baseball, softball, skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing. Out of all of these, I am most excited to watch the skateboarding competition because pro skateboarders can pull off some very cool tricks and flips, I'll just have to wait until July 2021.

    

    

COVID-19 Stole My Annual Summer Trip By Ethan V.

                                         COVID-19 Stole My Annual Summer Trip    7-10-20
 By Ethan V.

     To kick off my summer vacation for the past 5 years, my sister and I have been visiting my Grandparents (Momo and Jiji) in Evanston, Illinois and then we go on an adventure with my aunt Koko. This year our streak has been broken due to COVID-19 and because it isn't safe to fly during the global health crisis. This is very sad because without this trip and my camps, I am stuck at home and can only talk to my friends over the phone.

    Usually at this time I would be with Koko and we would be traveling somewhere. For the last 3 years we have been to Vermont, Thomas Jefferson's House, Monticello (in Virginia), George Washington's house, Mount Vernon (also in Virginia) and last but not least Williamsburg in Virginia as well. We also went to Yorktown, Hershey Park in PA, Harper's Ferry.  One of the things I love the most about being with Koko and traveling with her is how we always end up on a adventure and we always create a funny story to tell when we are traveling.

    When we go to Momo & Jiji's, we usually do things like watch the 4th of July Central Street parade and catch fireflies. We also get top notch Japanese lessons from Jiji. Those are very fun and even more fun when we do calligraphy with ink and a brush. We spend a lot of time playing with Koubou, our grandparents cat who we helped pick out of the shelter.

    When I was looking at the old photos from our trips, I feel sad because this year we won't have lots of fun exploring different places with Koko and I won't get to see Momo, Jiji and Koubou :(.

    Next year, I hope that things are back to normal and we can go back to tennis camp in Evanston and go to Salem, Massachusetts like we were supposed to with Koko this year.